Cremation is used extensively today as an alternative to burial or entombment of a deceased person. Cremation is generally less expensive than these more established burial practices and involves fewer ecological and land use problems. In addition cremated remains can be more easily stored at a repository located in a home or church and if necessary can be easily transferred to another repository.
The prior art discloses a variety of burial urns and storage arrangeents for burial urns. One well known type of burial urn is the book urn. Generally book urns are fabricated from relatively expensive metals such as brass or bronze cast in the shape of a book. U.S. Pat. No. 2,009,724 to Bircher and U.S. Pat. No. 3,167,844 to Bachofner are representative book urns. A problem with this type of urn is that they are designed to be mounted for display in book-like fashion on shelves and cannot be displayed and easily protected from theft and vandalism, especially if they are stored in a public place such as a church. Other urns such as the urns disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,183,574 to Diem and U.S. Pat. No. 3,529,730 to Thompson are basically sealed receptacles that are not as aesthetically pleasing as the previously mentioned book urns, but can be more easily stored and protected in storage racks.
In addition to these deficiencies the prior art urns generally only display an engraved plate indicating the name, date of birth, and date of death of the deceased and do not have means for displaying a reminder or memorial of the deceased person such as photographs or a written memorial to the person.
Accordingly it is an object of the present invention to provide a burial urn that is aesthetically pleasing yet can be easily stored and protected from theft.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a burial urn having means for displaying a memorial of the deceased person.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a burial urn constructed in the shape of a book that can be mounted in a storage rack and pulled out of the rack and pivoted for displaying a memorial of the deceased person.